Today's other stories in brief

i-conX agrees major new deal

Dublin telecoms firm i-conX has won a multimillion euro deal with mobile operator Tele2 Russia. Although negotiations are ongoing, which means the precise value of the contract is not yet known, it is similar in scale to the recent contract with Belgium's Base Telecom, which is expected to generate €1 million over the next three years.

Tele2 Russia, part of the Swedish Tele2 group of companies, has 10.5 million subscribers.

i-conX provides software and services to handle interconnect billing, which ensures all parties to the connection of call receive the correct revenues. The deal was announced as part of this week’s enterprise Ireland trade mission to Russia.

Girl meets Boy for Mercury media firm

Mercury Boy, the media production company, has launched Mercury Girl, a new software and games development house focused on the iPhone, Blackberry and Google’s Android platform. It has already created a number of popular iPhone applications including radio apps for Newstalk and Today FM, Twecipe, a cooking application, and iPub, which finds the nearest Irish pub to you.

Founders Tim Duggan and John Callaghan say the launch of the third-generation iPhone software next month will make it easier to have a business model around content delivery.

Technology audits rarely conducted

A new KPMG survey has found that just 16 per cent of businesses conduct regular technology audits so that they can respond to changes in their business and the risks associated with it. A quarter of businesses that responded to the survey, which was conducted across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, do not have a planning framework to focus IT audit activity on the business and technological risks of the organisation.

Consultants with the firm said that as companies of every size become increasingly dependent on IT, these statistics indicate how vulnerable some businesses are in allowing risks to go undetected through “lack of adequate IT audit planning”.